The single most important property of enzymes is the ability to increase

the rates of reactions occurring in living organisms, a property known as catalytic

activity. Because most enzymes are proteins, their activity is affected by factors
that disrupt protein structure, as well as by factors that affect catalysts in
general. Factors that disrupt protein structure include temperature and pH;
factors that affect catalysts in general include reactant or substrate concentration
and catalyst or enzyme concentration. The activity of an enzyme can be
measured by monitoring either the rate at which a substrate disappears or the
rate at which a product forms.
In the presence of a given amount of enzyme, the rate of an enzymatic
reaction increases as the substrate concentration increases until a limiting rate is
reached, after which further increase in the substrate concentration produces no
significant change in the reaction rate (part (a) of Figure 1). At this point, so
much substrate is present that essentially all of the enzyme active sites have
substrate bound to them. In other words, the enzyme molecules are saturated
with substrate. The excess substrate molecules cannot react until the substrate
already bound to the enzymes has reacted and been released (or been released
without reacting).

Figure 1Concentration versus Reaction Rate. (a) This graph shows the effect of
substrate concentration on the rate of a reaction that is catalyzed by a fixed amount of
enzyme. (b) This graph shows the effect of enzyme concentration on the reaction rate
at a constant level of substance.